More pups!

[ahosey01]

Two Medjools today. Bigger one is probably 60lbs.

Super clean cuts off the mother plant. Less than 6 inches of cut tissue in both cases. 
 

[Johnny Palmseed]

13 hours ago, ahosey01 said:

Two Medjools today. Bigger one is probably 60lbs.

Super clean cuts off the mother plant. Less than 6 inches of cut tissue in both cases. 
 

So these are suckers that you cut off a mother plant? I’m not familiar with this type. And are these the same as in your other post? I was surprised that you could expect to grow a new plant from such a small offset with no roots.

[ahosey01]

3 hours ago, Johnny Palmseed said:

So these are suckers that you cut off a mother plant? I’m not familiar with this type. And are these the same as in your other post? I was surprised that you could expect to grow a new plant from such a small offset with no roots.

So these are suckers off the mother plant, yes, and they were obtained by the same process as the one in the other post, but they’re different varieties.  The first post was barhi, which is more rare and is one of a few dates that is actually best eaten with a firm, apple like texture.  These are medjools, which are big and are best eaten dried and ripened like normal dates. 

There’s a technique to this.

A specific date variety is only ever grown by starting the palm this way.  For example, if you were to go to the store and buy a medjool date, eat the fruit and then plant the pit, you would ultimately grow the same species, Phoenix dactylifera, but not the same variety. The plant you grew from seed may produce tasty dates, or it may not. It may be a male, or it may be a female.  In order to grow the same variety of fruit with the same texture and taste, and ensure it is a female, you have to cut a sucker off the mother plant.  All variety-specific dates grown anywhere in the world were grown on plants that were, at some point, broken off a mother plant.

Now as for how likely it is to survive, you want to do this with large offshoots.  Once they reach a certain size, the connection to the mother plant begins to shrink and the pup grows its own roots. Both of these had many roots:

You also want to make sure that you sever the connection between the mother plant and the sucker at the smallest connection point possible.  If you do it well, your cut will be 1-2” in diameter, like this:

That pinkish tissue was the connection to the mother plant.  Then you dust it with copper fungicide and plant it into wet soupy mud, making sure to bob the plant up and down in the milkshake to force all the air bubbles out.

Dont forget to trim the spines and cut the fronds before you do it.  This is how commercial growers start new plants and some of them have a near-100% survival rate using this technique.

[Johnny Palmseed]

That’s cool! I had no idea that was how they were propagated.

[Reyes Vargas]

1 hour ago, ahosey01 said:

So these are suckers off the mother plant, yes, and they were obtained by the same process as the one in the other post, but they’re different varieties.  The first post was barhi, which is more rare and is one of a few dates that is actually best eaten with a firm, apple like texture.  These are medjools, which are big and are best eaten dried and ripened like normal dates. 

There’s a technique to this.

A specific date variety is only ever grown by starting the palm this way.  For example, if you were to go to the store and buy a medjool date, eat the fruit and then plant the pit, you would ultimately grow the same species, Phoenix dactylifera, but not the same variety. The plant you grew from seed may produce tasty dates, or it may not. It may be a male, or it may be a female.  In order to grow the same variety of fruit with the same texture and taste, and ensure it is a female, you have to cut a sucker off the mother plant.  All variety-specific dates grown anywhere in the world were grown on plants that were, at some point, broken off a mother plant.

Now as for how likely it is to survive, you want to do this with large offshoots.  Once they reach a certain size, the connection to the mother plant begins to shrink and the pup grows its own roots. Both of these had many roots:

You also want to make sure that you sever the connection between the mother plant and the sucker at the smallest connection point possible.  If you do it well, your cut will be 1-2” in diameter, like this:

That pinkish tissue was the connection to the mother plant.  Then you dust it with copper fungicide and plant it into wet soupy mud, making sure to bob the plant up and down in the milkshake to force all the air bubbles out.

Dont forget to trim the spines and cut the fronds before you do it.  This is how commercial growers start new plants and some of them have a near-100% survival rate using this technique.

Thank you for all that detailed instructions.  I have a date palm with two pups that I'm going to attempt to separate this summer.  This is a male tree so I'm not doing this for the fruit just want to get more trees.  Hope that at least one makes it.  So do you know how long it will take for the palm to make roots and start to grow?  I'm assuming years.

[ahosey01]

5 hours ago, Reyes Vargas said:

Thank you for all that detailed instructions.  I have a date palm with two pups that I'm going to attempt to separate this summer.  This is a male tree so I'm not doing this for the fruit just want to get more trees.  Hope that at least one makes it.  So do you know how long it will take for the palm to make roots and start to grow?  I'm assuming years.

Those almost look like aerial suckers - where the attachment point is above the soil. If they are, you can’t break them off as-is without most likely killing them.  Rare exceptions where they’ll survive.  However - what you CAN do is hang a bag of soil from the sucker at it’s base, so the soil is touching it. Do this through the hottest part of the growing season, and it will kick out a bunch of roots into the soil.  Then you can separate it from the parent plant and it’ll grow immediately.

To answer your question - if you get a sucker that actually has roots, you can usually get them to grow that same season. Best time to cut these - with roots - is mid-late March.  I would say that if those have roots, do it soon.  If they’re aerial, use the soil bag trick til next March, then cut them off and they’ll put leaves out as soon as you have them in the ground.

[Cool Ritchie]

Hello,

Request your advise.  Do you think it's possible cut and grow one of the small suckers out of the hybrid reclinata on photo.  Thank you for any feedback.